One of the hidden wonders of The Brandery community is how the people connect in ways that would otherwise never happen. Over the past six classes, we have created some pretty fantastic unions of founders, employees, and more. Here are a few of our favorites:

Former Brandery interns (“Brandterns”) form a tech startup together

Brian Back (Brandtern batch Fall ’14) and Aman Tsegai (Brandtern batch Summer ’15), both University of Cincinnati students, have used their hands-on startup experience to form a crazy solid founding team for their startup, Datazar. Datazar is essentially the Wikipedia for experimental data— no more repeating something someone already did, and aggregating more data is super easy. Brian is a marketing student and Aman is a physics student and self-taught developer. We are thrilled to see Datazar grow!

LookIt and ShoutOut merge to become Cintric, then scoop up a fellow cohort-mate

When they arrived to The Brandery in 2014, Connor and Rhett were working on a product sentiment app. Erwan and Joel came in with a location-based chat app. After working on proving out the concepts, they realized they were both facing the same problem: location data drains battery. Thus, Cintric was born in the middle of the accelerator program. The companies merged to create a cutting edge intelligence-engine that accurately tracks 450,000 people around the world. In early 2015, they picked up Ian Donahue, former CPO of Venn (also Class of 2014) to lead their design efforts.

Brandery company stacks the leadership team with friends of The Brandery

Drew McKenzie had been an active member for years. When he decided to leave Luxottica to run product strategy at Ahalogy (Class of 2011), we couldn’t be happier. Drew remains an incredibly active and valuable mentor in our network. Then, in 2015, Ryan Watson, co-founder of Sqrl, joined Ahalogy as their CFO.

Brandery grads invest in another Brandery grad

When Brandon Cannaday and Charlie Key sold their company, Modulus (Class of 2012), to Progress software in 2014, they put the proceeds to good use. After the class of 2014, the co-founders invested into Strap, a human data analytics company. Now, the two have announced they are moving on to their next venture, Structure. Guess who’s on the development team? Brandery grad Adam Daniel, former CTO of REPP (Class of 2012). We want to shout this story from the rooftops.

Hodgepodge of Brandery people get together to create Fin-Tech startup

What do you get when you mix a founder of Wax Music (2014), a founder of Tapfit (2013), and a Brandery intern? Sprinkle in a successful YC alum as CEO and you’ve got Dave, the personal finance app that is a collaboration between John Wolanin, Zack Martinsek, and Marcelle Bonterre. The guys are eliminating overdraft fees. Dave is launching soon. And as a bonus, Zack and Marcelle previously worked together at Strap (Class of 2014) and John freelanced for Frameri (Class of 2013).

Two founders of Wax Music merge with Lifecycle

After the Class of 2014, Wax Music and Venn had both pivoted into Chirp and Lifecycle, respectively. After quickly finding that they shared a similar mission for the future of customer engagement, they decided to join forces to form a super company as Lifecycle. They’ve been on an incredible trajectory every since, finally fleshing out all of the pieces of the puzzle, and gaining thousands of customers in just 3 short months together.

Jersey Watch hires former Urban Trials CTO

When the Urban Trials (Class of 2015) refocused during the program to place less emphasis on the technology in the short-term, fellow cohort mate Jersey Watch was waiting in the wings to hire talented developer Nick Rattermann. We’re thrilled to keep Nick in our network!

Cohort mates end up being co-workers at fast-growing Tesla competitor

Andy Fortson, co-founder of Co-Ed Supply, and Ricky Phung, co-founder of ShopStoree (both Class of 2013), had both moved on to the next thing and back to Los Angeles. In 2015, they became co-workers yet again at Faraday Future, the mysterious and fast-growing car company. Bonus: they are both now engaged to their original co-founders, Marissa and Sharon, respectively! Congrats!

Our own staff came from close by, too

Our core staff for the Class of 2015 was made up of three people: Tony Alexander, who served on The Brandery’s board for years and was a mentor since the beginning, Emily Cooper (me), who began as a Brandery intern in 2013, and Craig Baldwin, who was a 2013 graduate of the program with Sqrl. We just couldn’t get enough!

We love the intermingling of our alumni. It’s validation for us that we are truly bringing in the 30 smartest people we can find in each cohort. We bet on the founder, and the others in the class recognize it. Pretty cool.
Did we miss any Brandery love stories? Tweet us (@brandery)!